California
The Sacramento Bee, one of California’s largest newspapers, is calling on Gov. Jerry Brown to veto a bill (SB 168) that would prohibit petition circulators from being paid by the signature. The Bee correctly points out that the legislation would only serve to empower special interests while silencing grassroots voter groups:
Progressive columnist Randy Shaw recently offered New York City as an example of the protections that come from a healthy process of initiative and referendum (emphasis mine):
A rather quixotic visiting economics professor at UC Santa Barbara has submitted three initiatives for the California ballotthat are sure to enrage. Lanny Ebenstein, who got his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and Political Science (his dissertation was The Greatest Happiness Principle: An Examination of Utilitarianism,according to his CV), heads up the California Center for Public Policy which is behind the initiatives. It’s a rather right-leaning organization that has its own ideas on how to reform public employee compensation.
Some of you may have heard recently that California made the decision to tax online referrals from companies to Amazon.com. As you might expect, Amazon and other online companies were none too pleased with the new development and have begun work to bring the issue to voters:
The Mission Springs Water District on Monday filed a court challenge against a citizen initiative that would roll back this year’s water and sewer rate increases, arguing the measure is unconstitutional and would bankrupt the district. The proposed initiative, whose backers include former Palm Springs City Councilman Jim Jones and former Desert Hot Springs City Councilwoman Mary Stephens, received more than 1,400 registrar-certified signatures in a petition drive earlier this year to put it on the November ballot.
Amazon.com Inc has taken the first step toward asking California voters to repeal a new law requiring websites that forward shoppers to it to collect sales tax, a spokeswoman for the state’s attorney general said on Monday. The attorney general’s office received the petition on Friday and will prepare a title and summary for the initiative, which would require nearly 434,000 voters’ signatures to qualify for the ballot, the spokeswoman said.
California legislators – who seem unable to come up with an honest balanced budget, who always pursue tax increases and who won’t pass even modest reforms to the state’s unfunded pension system or to anything else, for that matter – want to blame the government’s problems on voters, rather than themselves. Several bills, some of which are likely to pass, would gut the initiative and referendum process, or at least make that process far more burdensome. The ultimate goal: eliminating the main vehicle Californians have to reform a government that will not be reformed by elected officials, thus leaving us completely at the mercy of legislators and the liberal interest groups that control them.
A Redwood Shores man’s attempt to sign a ballot initiative petition with an electronic signature has been turned aside by a state appeals court. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal ruled in San Francisco Thursday that the state elections code doesn’t allow electronic signatures on petitions.
(LAKE RIDGE, VA) – Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, today called on Californians to contact their legislators and demand they defeat legislation that would require people who gather petition signatures on citizen-initiated ballot measures to wear large signs or “badges” on their chest.
“The people of California face many problems,” said Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob. “But perhaps the most serious is having a majority of legislators with the arrogance to actually force citizens to wear a sign on their chest when petitioning to put an initiative on the ballot.”
(LAKE RIDGE, VA) – Citizens in Charge, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, today called on Californians to contact their legislators and demand they defeat legislation that would require people who gather petition signatures on citizen-initiated ballot measures to wear large signs or “badges” on their chest.
“The people of California face many problems,” said Citizens in Charge President Paul Jacob. “But perhaps the most serious is having a majority of legislators with the arrogance to actually force citizens to wear a sign on their chest when petitioning to put an initiative on the ballot.”
With the constitutional deadline to approve a balanced budget fast approaching, Governor Jerry Brown says he’s not giving up on a budget deal with Sacramento Republicans. Brown still needs four GOP votes - two in the Assembly and two in the State Senate - to okay a ballot measure to extend a number of existing taxes which are about to expire. The Republican lawmakers are holding out for a companion ballot measure to control state spending and reform pension programs for state workers.
San Francisco has one of the more unique initiatives in the works, a ban on male circumcision. We’ve talked about it before on our blog and our newswire here, and it seems the initiative is now facing a bit of blowback:
Opponents of a measure that would make it illegal to circumcise male children in San Francisco filed a lawsuit to get the initiative off the November ballot. Calling the measure anti-Semitic, a threat to the religious freedom of both Jews and Muslims and an infringement on parental and medical rights, the plaintiffs are suing on the grounds state law prohibits local governments from restricting medical procedures, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.